


Roundabout Truth

by Ramasi



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Timeline, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:57:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramasi/pseuds/Ramasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Light is furious when he's kept in chains after he regains his memories; he has no choice but to try and figure out L further.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roundabout Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure if the rating is overkill, but when in doubt rate higher and all that...

He'd put up with the handcuffs easily, for weeks and weeks. It has been annoying, yes, but he had born it patiently, just another one of the detective's oddities he'd accept to prove his innocence. He was working next to L all the time anyway, so it didn't matter all that much. But now, now, every shift of the metal against his wrist sends a jolt through his whole body, he senses the heavy cuff imprisoning him like never before, inescapable, and L with the _key_ ; retroactively, he feels sick remembering his easy acceptance: in truth, he could put up with it all only because he was secure in his superiority, in his certitude that L was wrong. But he wasn't, and he's let himself be put on a leash, and he's losing, now, now that L refuses to let him go.

He wants him dead. His fingers arch for the familiar feel of the pen, but he'd settle for closing them around L's throat, anything, if it kills him, though even that doesn't seem to be enough, if he can't defeat, humiliate, utterly destroy him. When he closes his eyes, obscenely precise images of L's corpse flash through his mind. It's like a physical need, like hunger or thirst or desire, this want to see him dead, and his powerlessness makes him dizzy, so painful it is.

L, sitting next to him on the large bed in his usual position, thumb between his lips, like too many nights before, guesses nothing of this, stares into space blankly, waiting for the night to pass. Light has only seen him sleep a few times, and never in bed. He tries to lie still, tries not to dig his fingers into the covers in anger and agony, to keep even his face blank because there's cameras, always. Isn't it nice, Ryuzaki, he thinks bitterly, to sit here so secure, to be the world's most famous detective, yet so safe, so protected, so far away from the evil you pretend to fight – some people don't have this luxury, don't you understand, this isn't a game to them and I'll make you feel it.

He's going to kill him. If he's lost (but he isn't, can't be, there's a way out, he just hasn't found it yet), he'll kill L first, if he has to cut through his throat with his nails. And it'll be wrong, he knows this, killing always is, but this burden he will bear, and oh, there's such an unique voluptuous pleasure in sin, but he just thinks: he has every reason (and he doesn't think: every right, he's far beyond) to enjoy his victories in his fight for justice.

He relaxes: he's found no solution, the chain is no less heavy, but the thought of the murder is soothing, and he's about to fall asleep to sweet, sweet dreams, when L murmurs, in a quiet voice, as if to himself: "Thirteen days."

It tears him back from his half-asleep state like a punch. It's not the fear of exposure and death itself (far, far too deeply buried to even be considered), but the knowledge that he's trapped, these thirteen days like an ever-shrinking prison, links of the chain vanishing, and at the end of it there's L who needs to do nothing but stay motionless and wait and he's drawn closer and closer, fettered tighter and tighter...

The move is calculated, even if the thought behind is not: L's defence comes too late, and in an instant, Light has him pinned beneath him, holding him down with all his power, forcing him to motionlessness with his whole body.

"I hate you!" he hisses through grit teeth, and doesn't care if a camera catches the look on his face (but he's sure, only L's dark, dark eyes do, blank as dead screens); he digs his fingers into L's shoulders, remembers his fantasy from just before: tomorrow he'll walk out with blood under his nails, chain dragging after him, empty, L's hands broken to thousand pieces to give it free.

"Kira – " L begins, but Light cuts him off, furiously:

" _I am not Kira!_ "

Light pants, glares down at him, and L looks back up with wide eyes, and nibbles at his lower lips, like he can't keep his mouth unoccupied for too long. He's not sure what arouses him, the fantasy, the anger itself (sweet and freeing as insanity and power, deviated to all that is socially acceptable to hate until that isn't enough anymore), or Ryuzaki's body itself, trapped beneath him, deliciously close and deliciously under his power, but he knows that the latter is what makes him press closer, nails digging in again. And it's a good thing, probably, because a little more and he would have been down to open menaces.

L shifts just a little and lies still, but he doesn't speak again; Light can feel him get hard as well, and, as he moves against him, their members touching through the thin pyjama fabric, his mouth opens up slowly, unconsciously it seems, teeth releasing the lips like's his forgotten about it.

He can remember, from before, unclear confusing desire that he didn't understand because he didn't have all the data: even then, lust so muddled with desire to hurt, dominate and posses that it scared him just as much as the similarities he noticed between Kira's ideals and his own.

Maybe he would have backed off, but Ryuzaki must have seen something in his eyes that tells him that this is a competition; for an instant, it feels like he's melting under him, and it's a terribly disconcerting feeling of loss; L shifts a bit, then tries to push him off, arms braced against his chest, knees suddenly lifting up, and that's that: Light holds against it with all his strength. He curls the chain around one wrist, tying L to him, and tries to drag his arm away; the other hand, he pushes down between their bodies, into Ryuzaki's pants, and grabs his cock. Ryuzaki hisses when he closes his hand, grip just short of too painful.

 

It's much later that he remerges of what, at the time, didn't feel like a haze, but a precise, constant battle of mind and body alike, although they'd been very few words exchanged, and he can't remember who won. He lies, exhausted and _satisfied_ , still feeling L all over his skin and wondering if he'll ever get rid of it.

Beside him, L is lying on his side in nothing but his pyjama top and, annoyingly, humming quietly to himself. There are marks all over his body, the imprint of his fingers, his legs, and the places where his nails broke the skin, never enough to truly make him bleed. His own skin feels bizarrely raw, and he's sure there are teeth marks on him; one of them burns dully, right beneath his neck.

Is that all there is to it, he wonders, with sudden clarity, when he notices this. He still knows L very little, understands his logic, his traps, but not his strange notion on life or on friendship and relationships between people. He turns to face the detective.

"You've wanted this," he remarks, voice guarded, and traces over one of the most visible wounds; this is L, so there's just no way he'll misunderstand.

"I never really thought about it," L answers, after a short pause, unperturbed. "But, yes."

Light lets his hand sink.

"I'm not Kira," he repeats, earnestly. "No matter how much you want it. You need to let go."

He gives the cuff a slight shake for emphasis with the last sentence.

"I think you are," L answers. Light feels too tired, too peaceful with post-coital carelessness and even (and that's never happened to him before, but he refuses to think about that) vaguely affectionate, too hopeful at seeing a path for escape and control to become angry; the murderous rage is far away for now. The restraint on his wrist feels light, chains L to him just as much at it chains him to L, and there's nowhere he'd want to run to.

"I know," he says, in a tone of forced patience. He knows there are cameras, but will the others watch? Are there microphones as well? Thirteen days is more than he needs to raise new doubts against L in the others. He's not even sure he'd be lying: there's no such thing as instinct, no such thing as heaven-sent inspiration, especially not for ones like him and L, who are too brilliant to let their own mind play tricks on them and run away with obscure, hidden logic. And L's certitude is stronger than it should be with all his conjecture and inconclusive evidence.

He can still win this. Get free, have L killed, undo what they have done already.

The eyes that pear at him from under the dark hair are disconcerting as ever; a few more minutes, and the rage will be back.

"Most people," he adds, friendly but irritated, "manage to have strong feelings for more than one person. It's normal."

He smiles in the darkness when L blinks at him, and it's a strain to keep the smile from twisting (ugly and victorious, the way he'll smile when he watches L lose and die and never again), make it remain all reassuring friendliness: this is something you don't understand, but it's okay. I do now – we're friends, aren't we? I'll help you.


End file.
